


goldenly / huge / whole

by windupclock



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Found Family, Gen, Mythology References, Relationship Study, but in-canon mythology, extensive sun/moon imagery, katara and zuko are siblings i don't accept constructive criticism!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:54:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26365261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windupclock/pseuds/windupclock
Summary: It always left Katara wondering: if she was the moon and her brother was the ocean, where was the sun? Who was the bright, ever-burning Ri, the gold to complement her silver?(or: the sun and the moon are siblings, and so are Katara and Zuko.)
Relationships: Katara & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 102





	goldenly / huge / whole

Katara’s concept of family has always been an expansive one. 

Family is bigger than blood, bigger than the birth-ties that bind people together. Her people know this well; it is enshrined in the way they talk about it, the words they use. _Family_ means _home_ means _village_ ; they once used separate words for each concept, as the other nations do, but over time they became redundant. Katara’s village is her home is her family. There is no need to split hairs further than that. She calls her elders grandmother and grandfather, adults her parents’ age aunt and uncle, the other children cousins.

All this is to say: Katara is not born with a sister, but she finds one. Katara is born with one brother, and she finds another.

* * *

Katara was born under a new moon, the sky black above her and the tides roiling in the ocean not too far away. The legends hold that when the moon spirit cannot be seen in the sky, she walks the earth to visit the sea; on the new moon, her footsteps shake the world and wake the spirits of the babies born that day, giving them a spark of her lightless blessing. To be born under a new moon is to hold a sliver of the moon inside.

Katara is double-blessed by the moon, her birth and her bending setting her apart. She feels the moon-sliver sometimes, pulsing behind her ribs like a second heartbeat. The light that spills from the moon courses through her veins. 

* * *

The moon and sea are each half of a whole, pushing and pulling each other in the cycle of yin and yang. Katara grew up hearing these stories—how Tui and La turned the world around, the moon pulling the tides towards her and the sea pushing back—but there were other stories as well, other spirits.

One of Katara’s favorite stories was of Tui and her brother Ri, the spirit of the sun. 

The myth went that once, the two siblings fought—as siblings are wont to do—and Ri stormed off and ran around the world. Tui followed—the stories were never clear whether she wanted to apologize or finish the argument, but she was so dedicated to her chase that she forgot to eat and gradually grew thinner through the month. On the new moons, she took a break and visited the land, before returning to the sky to hunt her brother down. On the eclipses, when the sun and moon touched in the sky, Tui finally caught up with her brother.

Katara has borne the blessing of the moon all her life, the same gift that lets the spirit move the tides. When they acted out the stories, children trying to hold gods inside their fragile bodies, the last waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe always played the role of Tui.

Sokka rarely joined their games—two years older and ever-conscious of the war creeping across the water even before it reached their shores, he considered himself too grown to play-act with them—but when he did, Katara made him play the ocean spirit. The stories called Tui and La husband and wife, but two halves of a whole has many different meanings, and Katara always thought of her brother as partly the ocean. The tide may ebb and flow, but the water always comes back. The sea is unforgiving to strangers, but steady hands can make faith from the waves. 

It always left Katara wondering: if she was the moon and her brother was the ocean, where was the sun? Who was the bright, ever-burning Ri, the gold to complement her silver?

* * *

In a cavern underneath Ba Sing Se, Katara looks at Zuko and sees herself reflected in the gold of his eyes. Angry and scared and trying to collect the pieces of himself into something he understands—their griefs are their own, but they run parallel courses. Katara offers to help him. She holds out her hand.

It only sharpens the ache when he turns his back on them again to join forces with his sister. 

(The sun never stops running. They only catch up to each other on the eclipse.)

* * *

The more Katara learns about Zuko, the more of herself she recognizes in him. (The sun and the moon share the same light.) She hates it at first—she doesn’t want to have anything in common with him. No matter what he says, no matter how easily the others have accepted him into the fold, he’s still the enemy. She’s seen this before. Katara is no one’s fool.

But then Zuko starts proving himself, again and again. He apologizes for burning Toph’s feet. He takes Aang to see the Sun Warriors and brings him back again safe and whole, and he puts up with their teasing with only mild grumbling. He sneaks off with Sokka in the middle of the night, risking his own life and limb to rescue her father because Sokka asks him to. He helps Katara find her mother’s killer and he doesn’t question her when she chooses to let the man go.

Afterwards, they sit together and Katara tells him more about her mother. She stumbles through it at first, digging her nails into her palms to hold back tears, but then Zuko pats her awkwardly on the shoulder and tells her it’s okay if she needs to cry. It makes her laugh instead, which makes Zuko laugh, and Katara looks at him and can’t see the enemy anymore.

Zuko matches her stories with memories of his own. He talks about his mother, about his uncle, about his little sister and her friends. When Katara asks about his father, unable to keep the bitterness from her tone, he startles and looks at her with wide eyes.

“I think he hated me,” Zuko tells her, the words tumbling abruptly from his mouth. He looks surprised at how they come out. “He wanted to kill me when I was born.” He raises a hand to touch the edge of his scar. “He tried.”

“I’m going to kill him,” Katara says without thinking. 

Zuko stares at her for a long moment, then cracks a tiny smile. “Good,” he says. “Someone should.”

* * *

They go to face off together against Zuko’s sister, and it feels like a reenactment of Ba Sing Se, except Katara knows that Zuko will not fail them this time. She knows him. She trusts him. When he asks her to let him fight Azula alone, she steps back.

And then lightning splits the air in front of her, and her vision goes white for a moment, and she hears Zuko cry out in horror and then in agony. When she can see again, Zuko is on the ground in front of her, and Azula is attempting a smirk.

Katara sees red. The only thought that runs through her head is _how dare you call yourself his sister_ , and she sinks into a bending stance, drawing her water out to defend her brother the way he defended her.

* * *

“It’s going to be okay,” Katara tells Zuko afterwards, kneeling at his side, her water-wrapped hands hovering over his chest. He opens his mouth, but all that comes out is a moan. “It will,” she says, more forcefully this time. She tries not to think about Aang not breathing, about how the spirit water was the only thing that brought him back last time. This isn’t last time. This can’t be. “You’re going to be fine. Stop making a big deal out of nothing.”

The quiet sound that Zuko makes isn’t quite a laugh, but it eases the ache in Katara’s chest nonetheless. His good eye is open, face lit by the glow her healing water casts, and she glances at the sun-gold of his iris and knows she’s found her Ri.

The spirits can’t take him away from her. Not now, not again. She doesn’t care about the cycles, about how the sun and moon have to draw apart again when the eclipse ends. He’s her brother. She won’t lose him.

* * *

She doesn’t lose him. Azula’s lightning didn’t strike true, or Zuko didn’t absorb enough of the blow, or the spirits were smiling down on them—it doesn’t matter why, but Zuko pulls through. As soon as he’s out of danger, Katara glares at him and says, “Don’t ever do that again.”

“Don’t save your life?” Zuko scowls back at her. “I’m so sorry. It won’t ever happen again.”

Katara flicks his nose. “You scared me,” she says. She lets a note of fear seep into her tone, and Zuko’s eyes go wide. “I thought you were—you’re not allowed to, okay?”

“Oh,” Zuko says softly. “Katara, I—”

“I know,” she cuts him off. “You won’t do it again.”

“That’s not what I was going to say.” He grins. “I hope I don’t have to do it again, but—I would. If I had to. She would have killed you, Katara. I wasn’t about to let her.”

_The same light_ , Katara thinks, and she pulls Zuko into a fierce hug.

* * *

Katara carries Tui inside her, and Zuko bears Ri’s blessings, but they are not the spirits. Their story is not a cyclical tragedy.

They end the war, and Zuko comes to visit Katara in the South Pole. They sit together on an ice shelf under a full moon, and Katara tells Zuko her people’s stories in exchange for his. When they run out of legends, they fall into warm silence, her head on his shoulder and his arm wrapped around her. “Thank you,” he tells her, his voice hushed against the darkness.

“For what?”  


“For trusting me,” Zuko says. “For finding me, for giving me so many chances.”

Katara smiles, nestling in closer against him. “Of course,” she says. “That’s what siblings do.”

**Author's Note:**

> ri is a (less common) chinese word meaning sun. i know a lot of people use agni as the name for the sun spirit, but that feels weird to me since agni is an actual hindu deity (and since the moon and ocean spirits have chinese names, it felt fitting that the sun spirit should too). the story of tui and ri here is based off of the inuit legend of the moon goddess malina and the sun god anningan/igaluk (or at least off of one version of the legend—there's a lot of variance! interestingly enough, there's a version from repulse bay where the sun god hits his sister in the face during their fight and marks her face with a disfiguring burn. not relevant here but it's a cool coincidence). 
> 
> also, a disclaimer: the attitude katara has towards azula is not reflective of my own feelings! i love azula very much, but this is from the pov of katara, who decidedly does not.
> 
> the title is from 'all nearness pauses, while a star can grow' by e.e. cummings. the full line is "goldenly huge whole the upfloating moon".
> 
> thank you for reading! plz follow me on my avatar tumblr @gays4korra if you want (and talk to me about avatar!) :3c


End file.
